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Two years ago, I wrote about Memorial Day in Israel. I wrote about how it’s vastly different than in the USA because here everyone has lost a loved one or at least knows someone who lost a loved one for having the nerve to be a Jew living in his or her ancestral homeland, or the nerve to protect such people. And I wrote about how the ILPTO recognizes that many of it employees won't be at work on Memorial Day, but, absurdly, it forces applicants (and their attorneys) to work that day.
You’d think the Commissioner would learn from his mistakes, and grant a blanket extension for any filings due tomorrow (which will then push off the deadline to Sunday, since the office will be closed on Thursday for Independence Day and Friday and Saturday as it’s always closed those days), but noooo. Yet again, he’s closing the office to the public – i.e. no meetings with examiners, no discussing things with clerical staff – and yet again, he’s telling applicants that the office is open for the filing of papers. Until 8 PM. So not only is he not giving extensions, but he’s foreshortening the deadline to file.
He also did a similar thing two years ago when it snowed in Jerusalem, as discussed here.
And if that weren't enough, the announcement isn't even up on the ILPTO website, it was only made via email. See the screenshot above, showing the April 21 date, and the screenshot below, which shows that the last website update was on April 1, when the office announced its "Direct PCT" program (which will be ridiculed in a future post entitled "Why Do They Bother?").
The Grinch is back, and he’s running the Israel PTO.
Passover is nearly upon us. At the traditional Seder, the Jews commemorate the Exodus from Egypt and recount, inter alia, the plagues that the Bible records being visited upon the Egyptians – blood, frogs, lice, wild animals, livestock disease, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, killing of the firstborn.
Two years ago, in a bit of remarkable timing, swarms of locusts came from Egypt into Israel just in time for Passover.
Ok, they weren’t the sky-darkening, destroy-everything-in-their-path Biblical-type swarms, but considering we hadn’t had any in Israel for about 10 years, it was pretty impressive. And no, I didn’t snack on them, unlike some Yemenite Jews who through tradition know which locusts are kosher (see Leviticus chapter 11 for more info on that).
The experience got me to thinking at the time about patents on locust control. A search in the USPTO database for patents since 1976 containing the word “locust” in the claims shows 1556 hits (as of today). But there’s something call locust bean gum, which despite its name is plant-based and a common ingredient in foods and cosmetics, and something called the honey locust plant. When you eliminate claim sets having the word “locust”, “bean” “gum” and “honey”, the number of hits drop precipitously, to just 34.
Looking through the titles of those patents, it’s clear that many are there erroneously: the word “locus”, denoting a location, was obviously replaced accidentally with “locust”.
Hence we have claim 10 of US 8,461,437, which recites, “A seed of the hybrid corn variety CH939369 further comprising at least a first single locus conversion, … and wherein a hybrid plant grown from the seed exhibits the trait conferred by the single locust conversion….”. Or US 8,194,998 , which claims “A preceding vehicle detection apparatus …further comprising a traveling locust estimation unit and a vehicle condition sensor in communication with said traveling locustestimation unit”. Some of these also mean to refer to locust bean gum, but omitted the words “bean” and “gum”, like claim 13 of US 7,320,807: “A cheese snack as set forth in claim 11 wherein said hydrocolloid is selected from the group consisting of guar, locust, xanthan, agar and carrageenan.”, or claim 2 of US 5,651,550, “The target according to claim 1, wherein said ground legume plant is at least one legume selected from the group consisting of alfalfa, beans, clovers, peas, kudzu, lespedeza, locust, lupine, peanuts, and vetch, or a mixture thereof.” Even some patents that looked like they might be relevant, e.g. US 4,595,407, entitled “Triazinyl-amino-carbonyl-1,3-benzohetero- or -1,4-benzohetero-sulfonamides”, which might be a pesticide, were mistakes: claim 18 recites, “A method for controlling the growth of undesired vegetation which comprises applying to the locust to be protected an effective amount of a compound of claim 8.”
One patent that looked like it might have been relevant was US 8,705,017, “Photonic fence”. The Summary section refers to
“a system for tracking airborne organisms includes an imager (e.g., a camera or scanner), a backlight source (e.g., a retroreflector), and a processor. The processor is configured to analyze one or more images captured by the imager including at least a portion of the backlight source and to identify a biological property (e.g., genus, species, sex, mating status, gravidity, feeding status, age, or health status) of an organism (e.g., an insect, such as a mosquito, a bee, a locust, or a moth) in the field of view of the imager, using characteristic frequency, harmonic amplitude, shape, size, airspeed, ground speed, or location. The system may further include an illumination light source arranged to illuminate the field of view of the imager. The organism may have wings, in which case the processor may be configured to identify the biological property using a wingbeat frequency.”
Sadly, however, claim 1 recites
1. A system for tracking mosquitos, comprising: an imager having an image resolution and a field of view; a backlight source configured to be placed in the field of view of the imager; a detector configured to detect a signal indicative of a distance from the imager to an airborne organism; and a processor configured to analyze one or more images captured by the imager including at least a portion of the backlight source, the processor being configured to identify a biological property of the airborne organism in the field of view of the imager using at least one datum selected from the group consisting of characteristic frequency, harmonic amplitude, shape, size, airspeed, ground speed, and location, the processor being further configured to determine a probability that the mosquito is infected with malaria.
No mention of locusts, and limited to tracking mosquitoes. The claim was narrowed during prosecution. The only reason the patent came up in the search was because claims 10 and 11 were maintained in an earlier form:
10. The system of claim 1, wherein the organism is an insect.
11. The system of claim 10, wherein the organism is selected from the group consisting of a mosquito, a bee, a locust, and a moth.
Apparently neither the Examiner nor the applicant checked for antecedent basis for the recitations in the dependent claims.
One of the few cases in which the word “locust” appeared in the claims of a patent with reference to the insect and not a plant was for a toy to hold a bar of soap. See claim 8 of US 8,758,075: “The invention of claim 6, wherein the animal is chosen from the group consisting of an aardvark … locust… and zebra.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I had more luck when I searched claims using scientific genus names for locusts, such as Schistocerca or Locustana: most of those patents were for pesticides or controlling pests.
Interestingly, the extent of crop damage inflicted by the locusts of 2013 was far from biblical in scope, in large measure due to good tracking of the swarms, which facilitated spraying of the locusts at opportune times to control their reproduction. Apparently that tracking method isn’t patented. At least not in the USA.
This is somewhat off-topic for this blog, but it touches on something of a sore point, namely the indentured servitude to which men’s football and basketball players at major US universities are subjected. Basically, the universities field sports teams, and make huge amounts of money off the men’s football and basketball programs, both through direct ticket sales but primarily through television contracts and merchandising deals. Part of the myth they perpetuate is that the players are amateurs, who only play for the love the game, and that they are fairly compensated in the form of “scholarships”, whereby they pay no tuition and receive an education in exchange for playing. (That myth was partly debunked last year when the National Labor Relations Board in Chicago said that football players at Northwestern University were primarily employees, who spent upwards of 40 hours per week on football-related activities, and therefore could unionize if they chose to do so.)
Through the NCAA, the national body the universities established to oversee their sports programs, they enforce a zero-tolerance policy to ensure that players can’t capitalize on their labors or the fame that some of them gain for their exploits on the field: the players lose eligibility, and often the university is sanctioned. For example, the football team at Ohio State, a perennial powerhouse, got into hot water a few years ago when a star player offered a used jersey for sale on eBay, months after he’d played his last game. Oh, the horror! (See here for a related story about NCAA rules gone wild at the University of Wisconsin.) Invariably, when punishments are doled out, it is players playing years later, who weren’t even enrolled at the university when the original rules infraction took place, who are made to pay the penalty. Common decency and a sense of fair play are not the NCAA’s strong suit.
The University of Kentucky’s men’s basketball team is currently 38-0. If, as is widely expected to happen, it wins on Saturday the semifinals of the NCAA tournament, and then again on Monday in the championship, it will be the first men’s team since 1976 to complete a perfect season and the first ever to go 40-0 in a single season.
Enter a company called “40-0, LLC”, also known as “40and0.com”. That company is currently selling t-shirts, sweatshirts, socks and caps with “40-0” emblazoned thereupon – primarily, though not exclusively, in blue-and-white color scheme associated with U of K – and it has applied to register the mark “40-0” with the USPTO (application no. 86534269, still pending).
UK, for its part, has no such application pending, nor, apparently, is it presently selling similar merchandise. There is, however, a story going around today (see e.g. here and here) about U of K sending a cease-and-desist letter to the owner of the company. As usual with these popular press stories about IP issues, it’s hard to parse out the details from the mis-information. But the gist of it, apparently, can be summarized in this quote from UK’s lawyer: “We are well aware of third parties attempting to capitalize on the historic season of the University of Kentucky men's basketball team…As the University's licensing agent, we are working to vigorously protect UK's trademark rights in the marketplace from those that use the institution's indicia without permission.” Translation: if its team goes 40-0, then UK and UK alone is entitled to capitalize on that fact. Not some forward-thinking entrepreneur, and certainly not the employees, er, “students”, who accomplished the feat.
I’ll leave it to the trademark and unfair competition specialists to comment on the strength, or lack thereof, of UK’s case. I just have one question for UK: if the university were to make money from the sale of 40-0 merchandise, would you share the profits with any of the players who actually accomplished the feat?
Didn’t think so.
[Update, April 2: Dan McCall at www.libertymaniacs.com - the guy who beat the NSA - is now offering the Wisconsin t-shirts on his site. And knowing his lawyer, I'm confident he won't kowtow to the NCAA's warped worldview. Although Nigel Hayes, the UW player who came up with this list, still won't be making a cent.]
[Update April 5: so much for that "We own 40-0" nonsense, now that Wisconsin has dispensed with Kentucky. Will there be an uptick sales of the cattywampus shirts if UW goes on to win on Monday?]
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